


like a coca-cola on a christmas day

by missparker



Series: Long Distances [2]
Category: Major Crimes (TV), The Closer
Genre: F/F, Long-Distance Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 16:19:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missparker/pseuds/missparker
Summary: It’s another eight to ten years before Brenda can comfortably retire - she’s checked.





	like a coca-cola on a christmas day

_Just a little bit is all it takes_  
_Like a Coca-Cola on a Christmas Day_  
_You’re what I crave babe, what can I say?_  
_Would you, would you_  
_Would you be my sugar?_

**Sugar - Maren Morris**

*

In her meeting, Brenda daydreams the month forward. Hurries through the weeks left in March - all the spitting rain that still freezes into ice at night, all the buds on the trees, all the basketball on every TV screen she catches as she walks down the street past restaurants and bars. All of that floats away and she gets to be in Charlotte already and Sharon is there. 

Sharon travels a lot for work, Sharon, as it turns out, is very good at this new job. She’s efficient and ruthless and has, in the last nine months, made herself indispensable. Has risen from the ranks out of the Southern California region and now travels nationwide investigating internal cases of embezzlement and fraud. Catching them quickly because her years of detective work had demanded that she actually physically visit the locations these people worked instead of just rooting around in digital files remotely. Apparently Bank of America had balked at the notion until Sharon had turned up evidence in someone’s desk drawer and solved the case in a fraction of the normal time. Now they send her somewhere twice a month, it seems. 

Brenda can’t tell if Sharon actually likes it. She likes the money, certainly, but the work seems more hollow somehow. She’s not fighting for justice, it always comes down to money. Capitalism, protecting the bank. Brenda isn’t sure she could stomach honestly.

But then again, she works for Homeland Security, so maybe she could.

And truthfully, Sharon’s soulless job benefits Brenda. Sharon’s comes to the east coast several times a year and Brenda only has to take a train or drive for an hour instead of flying to LA all the time. 

Brenda’s phone buzzes now, set to silent and muffled slightly by the stack of paper sitting on top of it. She lifts the corner of the budget report. It’s Sharon - a strange time for her to call. Usually she calls Brenda in the evening, when she’s sitting in traffic and Brenda is thinking about getting ready for bed. Brenda’s work day isn’t even half over and Sharon’s has only just begun.

She sends the call to voicemail, tries to focus on the people around her, the agenda. No one is one hundred percent committed to this meeting because it’s Friday and they all just want to go home, but they’re not so disengaged that she could excuse herself to take a personal call. 

Later, in her office, she swipes at the voicemail notification and taps the button to put it on speaker. Her office door is shut - it’s a bad habit she has, one she acquired in Los Angeles when her office walls were made of glass. A closed door there had offered only a barrier to sound and not a very good one. Now it’s habit to close her door behind her even though the Director had hinted that it made her appear unapproachable. 

“Do people in D.C. not know how to knock?” she’d asked with a smile that was anything but sweet. 

Maybe she should care more about her reputation, but she does solid work and she doesn’t really have any ambitions of moving up any farther. Any position higher is basically a politician and she has no interest or aptitude for that. 

The voicemail starts to play. Sharon’s disembodied voice says, “ _Um…_ and there is quite a bit of a pause before she says, “ _Call me, please._ ” 

And that’s it. 

Brenda presses her lips together. Picks up her desk phone and dials Sharon’s office number. Maybe she’ll get lucky and Sharon will be at her desk. It rings once, twice, a third time and then Sharon answers, “Hello?”

“Hey,” Brenda says. “It’s me.”

“Brenda,” Sharon says. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry, I was in this… boring meeting.”

“Do you have a minute now?” Sharon asks.

“Oh yeah,” Brenda says, sinking into her seat and kicking her heels off under the desk. “I’m just waiting out five o’clock now.” 

“Will Pope called me,” Sharon says. “He wants me to interview for Assistant Chief.”

Brenda takes a moment to process this and then says anyway, “What?” 

“He didn’t offer me the _job_ , only the opportunity to interview for it,” Sharon says. 

“Huh.”

“Maybe not even that? Perhaps only an invitation to apply. Interviewed not guaranteed,” Sharon muses. 

“Well,” Brenda says. “Ain’t that Taylor’s job?”

“Retiring,” she says. “Finally.” 

Sharon is a year older than Taylor, but Brenda keeps that observation to herself. 

“Did he say why?”

“I mean,” Sharon says with a sigh. “He did tell me he’d made a mistake to let me leave the force which I suppose I appreciate. That they need someone with my expertise.”

“It’s a pay cut,” Brenda says. 

“I know that,” Sharon says. 

“Are you interested?” Brenda asks.

“Perhaps,” Sharon says. “I...I wanted to get your opinion, I think. What would you do?”

Brenda considers this. Sharon is being offered something Brenda had never gotten - an opportunity to try again, a trapdoor to open and let her slide back in. It’s not that she doesn’t daydream about that time her in life, about that job, about that work and those people. It’s just that she knows she can’t ever go back, not to how it was. 

“I know you say you like your new job but…” Brenda trails off uneasily. Sharon just chuckles.

“Yes,” she says dryly. 

“I suppose the worst thing that could happen is you apply and nothing comes of it, so… if you think you’d want to go back, go back, Sharon.” 

Sharon makes a humming sound, low. “You could apply for it, too,” she says lightly.

Brenda shakes her head even though no one can see her. “No, I can’t.” 

“And it’d make travel harder. We’d have to plan more strategically. Farther out, maybe,” Sharon says. 

“I could come out to you more,” Brenda says. “I mean, I feel like you come here because you’re already out here so much. And anyway, Sharon, don’t let me factor into it too much.”

“Why not?” Sharon asks. 

“Because you gotta live your life in a way that’s right for you,” Brenda says, her cheeks growing warm. She gets a heavy feeling in her chest, she twists the cord of the phone up in her hand. 

“You’re right for me,” Sharon says softly. “You feel right.”

Brenda lets out a breath. “Okay,” she says. “Good.”

There’s a few beats of silence. “Anyway, I’ll let you go.”

“When do you have to decide by?” Brenda asks.

“I told him I’d take the weekend to think about it,” Sharon says. “The least he could do.”

“The very least,” Brenda agrees. She thinks about offering to come out right now, to search flights and pay whatever huge price it would take to be there in just a few hours, but she’s trying to make better decisions, trying to live her life without the pleasure center in her brain calling all the shots. “Call me later,” she says instead. 

“I will,” Sharon promises and hangs up.

oooo

Brenda spends the weekend alone. That happens a lot now and in a way it’s by design. There are people at work she could be friendly with, but she’s not. There are men who have asked her out for drinks, for dinner, but she always declines. She no longer gives an excuse - she’s seeing someone, or she’s busy, or she has a conflict. She just says no. 

Charlie is at Loyola in Baltimore and so sometimes she takes the train and spends the weekend with Brenda. Brenda had been only slightly disappointed Charlie hadn’t picked a school out in California because it would have created more reasons to fly out to LA but it’s good to have her close enough to have as many visits as they do. 

But this weekend, she stays in. Cleans the bathroom, does laundry, does a food shop. Talks to Charlie once on the phone, talks to Sharon a few times. They still tend to text as much as they talk, but Sharon doesn’t send many texts over this weekend. Brenda doesn’t push it. 

Rusty has moved out, now, too, so both women are alone in their apartments. If Brenda were still in LA, it’d be easy enough to combine resources. To share an apartment, a closet, a life. But Brenda can’t go back to LA and Sharon is about to replant herself for the long run. 

It’s another eight to ten years before Brenda can comfortably retire - she’s checked. 

Sharon calls Sunday night. Brenda is running a bath, thinking about what she’s going to wear to work in the morning. She has a meeting at the DOJ so she’ll have to wear something uncomfortable. Heels, a fitted sheath dress. She hopes it doesn’t rain. She needs to dry clean her coat but she keeps forgetting. It’s starting to smell weird.

She answers her phone, says, “Hey, you.” 

“Hi,” Sharon says. “I’m gonna tell Pope in the morning okay, I think.” 

“Okay you’ll interview?”

“Apply, I guess,” she says.

“No,” Brenda says. “Don’t give him that. If he really wants you, you can force his hand. Send him an email inviting him to let you know when your interview is scheduled for.”

“Ah,” Sharon says with a little chuckle. “The Brenda Leigh Johnson school of negotiation is in session.” 

“I mean do what you want, Sharon, but-”

“No, you’re probably right. What do I have to lose, really?” 

Brenda doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Bath time?” Sharon asks. She can hear the water.

“It’s still cold here,” Brenda says. “I feel like I gotta thaw out when I get home.”

“I like bath time,” Sharon says softly.

“I like it better when you’re here,” Brenda agrees. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Sharon admits. 

“I could… maybe… next weekend I could try to pop out?” Brenda offers, squeezing her eyes shut. She told herself she wasn’t going to do this, but all that resolve has melted away at the sound of Sharon’s voice.

“I’d never turn you away,” Sharon says. “But don’t feel like you have to. Charlotte isn’t so very far off, now.” 

“Okay,” Brenda says. “I’ll let you know, how about that?”

“It’s a deal,” Sharon says. “Now go take your bath before it gets cold.”

“Yes ma’am,” Brenda says.

She buys plane tickets in the tub, holding her phone carefully over the edge, away from the water. They’re expensive but it’s just money. She doesn’t care. She forwards the flight information to Sharon who replies by text with an emoji of a yellow heart. 

oooo

The week seems to drag but all at once it’s Friday, Brenda knocks off work a few hours early. She’d packed the night before, brought the small suitcase to the office with her and stowed it under her desk. She gets to see it all day, rest her feet on it, let it remind her all day that by the time she went to sleep, it’d be next to Sharon. It’s easy to leave early on a Friday, easy for her anyway. No one schedules meetings that close to the weekend and there’s almost never anything that can’t hold until Monday.

She takes a cab to the airport, has an hour to kill. Spends it wandering around, ends up buying Sharon a little rollerball of perfume, something sweet. Sharon tends toward more floral perfumes but Brenda likes a sweeter scent. She figures it’s a win-win - she’ll like it if Sharon wears it and if she doesn’t like it, Brenda can keep it for herself. Things always smell better on Sharon. Something about her body chemistry mixes well with Brenda’s desire. 

She has a book on her Kindle, headphones to wear during the flight but she’s too antsy for entertainment of that sort so mostly she watches the little plane on the screen in front her make its way slowly west. It’s not a long flight, five hours. She’s done it so many times now. But still, the time drags. She gets up in the middle once to go pee and clean her face with a makeup wipe. Rub a little moisturizer into her cheek - she even brushes her teeth and then feels a bit more human. Soon the plane is descending, soon the wheels touch the ground. 

She doesn’t expect anyone to meet her - they hadn’t discussed it and Brenda has taken taxis and rideshares before but when she makes her way to baggage claim, headed for the outside, Sharon is standing there, waiting for her. 

Brenda’s heart speeds up at the sight of her. Sharon is in expensive jeans and a drapey, oatmeal colored sweater. Her hair is clipped back from her face and she’s looking at her phone instead of at the crowd of people spilling into the baggage claim so Brenda gets right to her, practically, before Sharon notices her. 

She looks surprised but it’s fleeting, just a quirk of an expression that melts into a smile.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hey there,” Brenda says. “Wasn’t expectin’ a welcoming party.”

“Oh, it comes with the accommodations,” Sharon says. 

“Lucky me.”

“Did you check a bag?” Sharon asks, eyeing Brenda’s purse and small suitcase. Brenda shakes her head no. “Then let’s go,” she says. 

Brenda doesn’t realize how tired she is until she buckles herself into the front seat of Sharon’s car. When Sharon turns on the ignition, the dashboard lights up and the satellite radio kicks in and it’s a Joni Mitchell song that reminds Brenda of being a teenager, watching her parents dance in the kitchen. _My old man, keeping away my blues._

Brenda is usually the chatty one, but Sharon seems to follow her lead and pulls onto the freeway in silence. Just reaches over from time to time to touch Brenda’s knee. 

“Are you hungry?” Sharon asks finally, when they get onto the off ramp. Sharon’s face is bathed in red light from the car in front of them. 

“Always,” Brenda says. 

“You want to stop and get something? Or we can put something together at home.”

“Home,” Brenda says. This earns her another knee touch. Brenda reaches out quick and snags Sharon’s fingers, winds them with her own. “Thanks for letting me stay this weekend.”

“You can stay forever, as far as I’m concerned,” Sharon says. She must realize what she’s said after she’s said it because her hand tenses up. “I just mean-”

“I know what you mean,” Brenda says. “Don’t feel bad. I know what you mean.”

Brenda can’t stay in LA and Sharon can’t leave.

And that’s just where they are. 

oooo

There’s no real rush to go anywhere or do anything in the morning, so they make a full pot of coffee and stay in bed until Brenda’s stomach growls. 

“You’re so thin, Brenda Leigh,” Sharon says. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Brenda walks more now that she’s back in DC, that’s all. To and from the metro, from campus to campus for various meetings throughout the day. It’s just easier to walk than to drive most places so she gets a lot more exercise. Less sun, though. But it’s made her lean, it’s made her clothes fit differently. She doesn’t, necessarily, like herself like this. 

Sharon makes sourdough toast, bacon, a little saucepan full of hollandaise sauce made from a packet she just had on hand. She poaches four eggs, all in a row. Brenda watches, fascinated, as Sharon gets the water swirling and cracks the egg one handed. Pulls it out perfect each time. 

She brings up the interview while they eat but Sharon shrugs it off, says, “Later, later.” 

So Brenda doesn’t press.

They shower separately, Brenda goes first. She means to go fast but there’s something about the hot water that makes her zone out. She realizes she’s been standing there for several minutes staring at the tile. Enough for the room to fill with steam. She hurries through the rest of the shower - washing her hair, shaving her legs, letting her conditioner set. She hums to herself to help keep track of time. 

Sharon doesn’t complain about hot water or the lack thereof but she does shower faster. Her hair is still dry when she comes out with it clipped high on her head. That solves that mystery. 

They’re too old, maybe, to spend the whole weekend in bed. They will make love, probably tonight, but it won’t be hurried and desperate. They’ll take their time. It makes the day feel okay now, knowing that’s ahead of them so when Sharon mentions that they might go out to the farmer’s market because it’s still early enough for that, Brenda agrees.

They’re meandering around bins of spring produce - heaps of artichokes, leafy green spinach, stalks of rhubarb blushing like a sinner in church - when Sharon takes her elbow and says, “There he is.” 

Brenda is eyeing a display of strawberries on the other side of the row they’re in, but she looks up at Sharon’s words and sees Julio in jeans and a light jacket, walking toward them. 

For a moment, Brenda feels acutely like what she is. A secret that they keep.

But it does no good to think about so she just hugs him and Sharon and Julio catch up while Brenda buys a bundle of asparagus for their dinner and a box of those strawberries, too, even though it’s a separate purchase. She pays cash both times, drops the change into the pocket of the coat she’s borrowing. A silky green bomber jacket with no lining - perfect for the weather and something, Brenda is sure, that Rusty left behind.

They go for lunch in a nearby deli, authentic and crowded with nowhere to sit. Julio suggests they carry their paper wrapped sandwiches to the park a few blocks down, so they do. They find a bench under some trees and Sharon sits in the middle. Brenda focuses mostly on her sandwich and listens to Julio pass on the gossip with half an ear. She wants to know the details to help Sharon but it makes her feel a funny kind of hurt to hear about Major Crimes. It was aching enough when Sharon was there but now that neither of them are, it’s hardly bearable. 

Julio has a short list of names of internal people putting in for the job and Brenda can’t help but snort when he gets to the end of it. 

“You’re better than all of ‘em combined,” Brenda tells Sharon.

“No bias there, I’m sure,” Sharon says.

“She’s right, though,” Julio says. “Your only real competition would be external candidates.” 

Will won’t want to pay for a big name from another large city, that’s for sure, so he’ll certainly be hard pressed to find someone both as qualified as Sharon and someone who already knows the inner workings of the LAPD quite like she does. As Sharon is fond of reminding people, she literally wrote most of the policy and protocol that is currently in use. Brenda doesn’t offer up this information either, but the more Julio talks, the more convinced she is that the job is Sharon’s for the taking. 

Brenda can identify the jealousy just fine. But there is pride for Sharon, too, and a third thing. Disappointment. Brenda had thought maybe… now that Rusty was out of the house and Sharon had a job that she could really do from anywhere, she thought maybe there was a not so distant future where they could really be together. Now she feels like the sun is in her eyes, like the room is too small, like hope is a waste of time. 

Sharon crumples up the white paper that had once contained her sandwich. 

“I have a lot to think about.,” she says, holding tightly to the ball of wadded up paper. 

Julio looks at Brenda, leaning back behind Sharon to catch her eyes. Brenda meets it, tilts her head a little as if to say, “It is what it is.” 

“You could come back too, Chief,” Julio says. “We could find a way.” 

“Maybe I could take up actin’,” she says. “Get a job at Neiman Marcus sellin’ shoes.” 

“It’s a good employee discount, I bet,” Sharon says. “I’m an 8.”

“I know your shoe size,” Brenda says, huffily. She turns to Julio. “We’ll do interview prep tonight.”

“Does anyone else see the irony in this but me?” Sharon says.

Brenda shakes her head, confused.

“Preparing you for your interview for Chief was how we became friends,” Sharon says. “And now you want to prep for me.”

“First of all, that is _not_ how we became friends. Secondly, I ain’t preppin’ you for the job, you’re overqualified for the job, Sharon, I’m preppin’ you for _Will_.”

Brenda can just barely see the flinch. She and Sharon don’t really talk about Will very much outside of the stunts he pulls as Chief of Police. Sharon, of course, is aware of the past Brenda has with Will Pope but she doesn’t really understand it and Brenda can only say that he was different then, and so was she and that answer is never satisfying for either of them. But Sharon should know that people change. Shouldn’t she?

Back in the condo, Sharon unpacks their canvas sack of produce and Brenda checks her email. She sits on Sharon’s bed with her laptop - her personal email is never as active as her work one, but she still tries to look at it once a day. 

Today, surprisingly or, perhaps not, she has an email from Will Pope. From his personal address, as well.

_Brenda,_

_I know things could have gone better between us a few years back but… anyway. We’re trying to get Sharon Raydor to rejoin the force. I know, at least I think, you two are still friendly. I would consider it a favor, one I’d have to owe in return, if you’d speak to her and try to convince her to rejoin the LAPD. Think about it._

_Hope you’re doing well,_

_Will_

She reads it three times and then says, “Honey?”

She hears Sharon’s footsteps in the hall and then she pokes her head into the bedroom with a funny expression and says, “You called?”

“Come look at this,” she says.

Sharon is still holding her kitchen towel and she throws it over her shoulder and walks over to the bed. Brenda twists the laptop toward her and Sharon leans over and squints. After a second huffs and says, “I hate these bifocals.”

Brenda whips off her own glasses, just magnified readers and Sharon takes them, puts them on and leans over again. The towel slips off her shoulder as she’s reading but she doesn’t notice. 

“That’s interesting,” Sharon says, finally. 

“Ain’t it just,” Brenda says. 

“I guess I ought to think about putting my notice in,” Sharon says. 

“So you’ve decided?”

Sharon shrugs. “It’s really not much of a decision when you think about it ethically. Morally. And it would only be for a few years. Five, maybe, at the most. Then I’d retire.”

“Okay,” Brenda says, twisting the computer back toward her. “I’ll write him back.” 

“A favor from the chief of the police isn’t a bad thing to keep in your back pocket, either,” Sharon says, grabbing her towel and heading back toward the kitchen. 

“I agree,” Brenda mutters, clicking reply.

oooo

Brenda wakes up early, so early it’s still dark out. She’s gotta catch her flight. It’s cheaper to leave earlier and it will make Monday less painful but it’s tempting to say screw it and crawl back into bed with Sharon. Spend a few more hours skin to skin. 

But she rises, makes her way to the bathroom, starts the shower. Rubs Sharon’s shower gel all over her. It smells like Christmas and when she squints at the bottle, the scent is vanilla chai. Maybe they can spend Christmas together this year. Maybe she can dodge her brothers, scoop up Charlie and fly west. She and Charlie, Sharon and Rusty. A family. Well, pretending at it, anyway.

But Sharon has two more children and Brenda would just feel in the way, so she lets the dream slip down the drain along with the suds. She washes her hair, washes her face with Sharon’s citrus-y cleanser. Is about to rinse the conditioner out of her hair when the bathroom door opens. Sharon slides the shower door open and slips in.

“You should be sleepin’,” Brenda says, her voice a little hoarse. 

“I can sleep when you’re gone,” Sharon promises. She hugs Brenda to her. Brenda lets her hands slide down Sharon’s soft back, down to her hips. Sharon rests her fingers against Brenda’s spine and it makes her shiver. 

oooo

It snows again, one last fit of winter well into spring and that is what welcomes her home come Monday morning. She has to pull out her boots again, the soles gray with dried salt, the zipper along the inside cold to the touch. Her legs are freezing despite the thick stockings, but it’s still better than grimy wet hems of slacks that are always too long for her. 

Inside her office is warm and she sheds layers while her computer turns on with a groan, some churning, and one or two disturbing clicks. She gets into her email, pulls up her calendar. She can hear on the other side of the door, her administrative assistant arrive. Brenda almost always beats her into the office - Hannah has two kids to get to school and an Air Force husband who is deployed, Brenda can’t recall exactly to where. 

It doesn’t take long for Hannah to knock and come in holding a mug of coffee for Brenda. 

“Thank you,” Brenda says, watching her set the mug down on the desk.

“How was your trip?” Hannah asks. She’s young, not out of her twenties yet and this is a good job for her. One she got because she’s smart, because her husband is military, because her father works for the DOJ. Because she’s a DC native through and through. Brenda doesn’t care how she got here, she’s gotten plenty of things on the coattails of her husband or her daddy or the man she was sleeping with. 

“Fine,” Brenda says. “I’m gonna try to play catch up today.”

“Sounds good,” Hannah says.

When she leaves, Brenda pulls open her desk drawer and pulls out two packets of sweetener, dumps them into the mug. 

The Chief of Police of the Atlanta Police Department is a woman named Erika Shields and while Brenda doesn’t know her extremely well, they certainly know of each other. They’d had some overlap when Brenda worked for Atlanta PD. Which is why when Hannah asks to patch a call from Chief Shields through, Brenda accepts even though it’s out of the blue. Even though with any other Chief of Police, even of a large metropolitan area, Brenda would probably ask them to make an appointment or send a request for a meeting through official channels. 

“This is Brenda,” she says.

“Chief Johnson,” Erika says.

“Chief Shields,” acknowledges. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I know this is out of the ordinary,” she says. “But time is of the essence. I’ve been Chief of Police here in Atlanta for just over a year.”

“I remember,” Brenda says. “I was proud to hear of it.” 

“I would like for this position to be held by a woman for a considerably longer time. My predecessor was Chief for nearly seven years and I’d say that’s a pretty good run.”

“Uh,” Brenda says. “I don’t follow. You plannin’ on quitting?”

“I’m planning on dyin’,” Chief Shields says. “I have stage four ovarian cancer.”

“Jesus,” Brenda says before she can school her reaction into something better. “I’m truly sorry to hear that, Erika.” 

“I have about enough time to find a replacement and try to get ‘em approved and sworn in,” she says. “There are some good officers here on my force, but there isn’t a woman ready to take over and to keep a woman in charge, I’m willing to pull from the outside.”

“Ah,” Brenda says.

“Chief Johnson, I’d like for it to be you.”

“Me?” Brenda says. “Erika, honestly. You have to know… I barely made it out of my last police department with my reputation intact. I seem to barely make it out of any police department with my reputation intact.”

“I know you survived that ethics inquiry. I know that you were right all along about Phillip Stroh and the error there fell to the LAPD. Brenda, I know Will Pope. Know him well. I think your reputation shows that you’re tough and smart and ruthless.” 

Brenda sighs, rubs at her forehead. “I just… can I think about it?”

“You don’t have to say yes today, you just have to not say no,” Erika says. “You’ve worked for us before, you’re from Atlanta. You’d be a good fit. A great one.”

“I will think about it,” she says. “Give everything to my assistant, okay? Forward everything along.”

“I already did,” Erika says. “Thank you.”

“Okay then,” Brenda says. “Bye-bye now.”

She hangs up, frets for a moment. Opens a browser and googles the symptoms of stage four ovarian cancer. After a paragraph, she’s seen enough to know how bad it’s going to be, and how fast, so she just closes the page. 

She calls Sharon’s office but that goes to voicemail and when she calls Sharon’s cellphone, that goes to voicemail, too. 

“Call me, please,” she says into Sharon’s voicemail. 

Sharon doesn’t call for hours and hours and when she does, finally, return Brenda’s call, she calls from a hotel in Phoenix. Brenda is on her couch, full of her dinner of takeout and red wine.

“My last trip,” Sharon says. She sounds tired. “I put in my notice.” 

“You got the job,” Brenda says.

“Yeah,” Sharon says. “Not much of a fight after all.” 

“I bet Julio is happy,” Brenda says. 

“Well, I don’t know… if anyone knows yet,” she says. “He will be.” 

“And Andy?”

“Screw Andy,” Sharon says. Sharon had done everything she could to break up with him and preserve the friendship and then, when that failed, the working relationship and all Andy Flynn had done was be an asshole.

“Maybe he’ll retire.”

“He can’t afford that,” Sharon says. “Anyway.”

“Congratulations, Sharon,” Brenda says sincerely.

“Well,” she says uncomfortably. “You wanted to talk about something? What’s up?”

“Oh,” Brenda says. Suddenly she doesn’t want to talk about it just yet. She doesn’t want to turn the conversation away from Sharon being so good that Will had to woo her back. “I guess Charlotte is canceled?”

“I guess so,” Sharon says. “You may have to… come to LA more. We can start splitting the cost of plane tickets-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brenda says. “You’re about to take a pay cut. I already have the Friday off. I’ll just come to LA instead, okay?”

“Okay,” Sharon says. “Only if it works. That’s only two weeks away.”

“I’ll let you go,” Brenda says. “You sound tired. I’ll send you my flight info.”

“Okay,” Sharon says through a yawn. “Call me tomorrow.”

Brenda promises that she will and hangs up. Holds her phone in her hand for a few moments, all filled up with uncertainty. She doesn’t like change. 

Finally, she wipes the makeup off of the flat screen of her phone and sets it on the coffee table, where it stays quiet for the rest of the night.

oooo

Brenda goes to LA instead of Charlotte and then takes the Monday off, too, but doesn’t tell Sharon. She stops in Atlanta on the way back to DC. She doesn’t tell Bobby or Clay Jr., she doesn’t tell anyone at all. An unmarked car is waiting for her at the terminal and it takes her to Peachtree street. An officer takes her from there and escorts to Chief Shields’ office. 

Brenda has already done some of her own research. The force is understaffed and overly violent and reactionary. There are several pending cases of police brutality, especially against Atlanta’s high transient population. Brenda would be another female chief, sure, but also another white woman in a city that was over half African-American.

But there are things she is uniquely qualified to tackle - bringing down Atlanta’s murder rate would be high on that list. And after nearly ten years of working in Los Angeles, she can probably negotiate a crime scene overlapping with a film set in her sleep. And for once, people would sound like her for a change. Wouldn’t that be something?

It’d be a pay cut, but the cost of living is lower. 

It’ll be harder to see Sharon, but she’ll be in a line of work that makes her happier. 

She’ll be closer to a lot of her family, but farther from Charlie. 

Erika looks okay, still, though a little thin. Her uniform gapes in strange places and she has dark circles under her eyes.

But her handshake is firm and her smile genuine.

“Thank you for coming, Chief Johnson,” she says, closing her office door.

“Brenda is fine,” Brenda says, smoothing her skirt nervously. Sick people always make her nervous. She doesn’t like to think about dying or losing the people she loves. Her parents had been hard enough. She isn’t sure she can take more than that, frankly. “Just fine.” 

“Do you want a coffee or a coke?” Erika asks. “Water?”

“No, no,” Brenda says, sitting in the chair offered to her. “I only have a couple hours before I have to be back at the airport.”

“I know you’re busy, thank you so much for making the time.”

“That’s not...” Brenda says, feeling like an asshole. “That’s not what I meant but it was no problem.” 

Erika smiles.

“I’ll be real upfront about things as to not waste both of our time,” she says. “You’re my first choice. I’ll fight hard for you but I know it’s a pay cut and I know people don’t always want to come home again.” 

“It’s not that,” Brenda sighs. “I love Atlanta. I’ve been reluctant to sell my parents’ house because part of me thought I might want to come back someday but taking on a police force is a big responsibility.”

“It is,” Erika agrees.

“And I may be a harder sell than you think,” Brenda hedges. “I came from the intelligence community, I was never a beat cop you know.”

“You’re record as a detective is outstanding,” Erika says.

“I had to leave the LAPD to avoid being terminated,” Brenda says.

“I think time has cleared you of those charges. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows about Stroh now. They know the LAPD let him get away, I can make it clear that you were the voice of reason in that situation.” 

Brenda nods, hot on the back of her neck. Her palms feel slick. 

“Erika,” she says. She’s never done this before, actually, not really. Not to anyone other than Charlie and Fritz and Rusty, sort of. Otherwise, it’s something she’s kept to herself. But the woman needs to know, she needs to have everything on the table. “Um. I should tell you that…”

Erika just nods, waits. 

“The thing of it is, this is still the south and as progressive as, as Atlanta is, I’m not sure they’re gonna be real happy with a woman and, um…”

She wipes her hands on her skirt. 

“Brenda?” Erika says.

“I’m gay,” Brenda blurts, looking just above Erika’s head. “Um. So I think that might be a harder sell than you were anticipatin’.” 

Erika tilts her head. “I see.”

“Or bisexual I guess. I’m never really… sure, exactly, how it all works but I have a partner in California…”

“Sharon Raydor,” Erika says, glancing down at her notes on her desk. “I heard she just re-joined the LAPD, is that true?”

Brenda blinks with genuine surprise. 

“Assistant Chief of Operations,” Brenda says. 

“I did my homework,” she says. “I made my choice carefully.”

“I see,” says Brenda.

“I’d like to float your name to my board, take their temperature so to speak. If I don’t get any significant pushback, I’ll move forward the moment you say go. If I do, we can meet again and reevaluate.” 

Brenda blows out a breath she’d been holding. “Float my name, by all means, but that doesn’t mean it’s a yes. I promise to give it a hard think and next time we speak, I’ll let you know, all right?”

“You’d say no to a dying woman?” Erika says. Brenda suspects she’s only partly joking. 

Brenda smiles, says nothing but she knows that yes, she would. She’s done way worse, in her time. 

oooo

A few weeks later, Sharon isn’t waiting for her when her flight gets in, not this time. She’s on the way to the rental car desks when she hears, “Brenda!”

Rusty is waving her down from just inside one of the sets of automatic doors that lead to the terminal. She redirects herself to meet him. He gives her a hug.

“What are you doin’ here?” she asks. 

“Sharon asked if I could get you - I was worried I’d miss you. Your phone is going straight to voicemail!”

“I forgot to turn it back on,” she admits, sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Weird, but okay. Come on, I’m parked super illegally.”

His car is abandoned on the curb, hazard lights flashing. There’s a police officer at the light.

“Just in time,” Rusty says, using the fob to pop open the trunk. It’s Sharon’s car. He gets into the seat and turns off the flashing lights - the office drives by and glares at them but doesn’t stop to make trouble. Brenda puts her own bag in the trunk and closes it, gets herself into the passenger’s seat.

“Thank you,” she says again. 

“I mean, we get dinner out of it, so it’s a good deal.”

“She’s home?” Brenda asks. 

“Yeah, she wanted to cook for us,” he says. “It’s her last week of freedom.”

“She starts Monday?” Brenda asks, though she knows the answer.

“She does,” Rusty says. “I’m not... “ He pauses to negotiate getting back into traffic. “I’m not, like, personally thrilled she went back but she’ll be out in the field, less, I guess, so in that way safer.” 

Brenda doesn’t comment on that except to say, “It’s what she thought was right.” 

Rusty looks older. Maybe it’s the scruff he hasn’t shaved off his face, maybe it’s because he’s been on his own for awhile. They’d helped to move him into a house in Long Beach that he shares with three other boys. Nicer than any place Brenda had lived at that age. Being independent - self-sufficient, maybe - suits Rusty. 

Brenda knows she would have been a terrible mother, but Sharon. Sharon had two successful children and had managed to turn around a third in just a matter of years. Brenda is forever in awe of her. 

“Apparently she has to wear a uniform,” Rusty says.

“She doesn’t _have_ to, but it’s the culture. That high up you’re as much of a politician or a figure head as you are anything else. The Chief will trot her out in front of cameras a lot. The uniform will help with that.”

“Because she’s a woman?” Rusty asks.

“Because she’s a pretty woman,” Brenda says. “And an unflappable one.”

“Why didn’t you ever want that job?” Rusty asks now. “I mean I remember why you left but…”

“Because,” Brenda sighs. “Because I applied to be the Chief of Police.”

“Really?”

“Once I didn’t get that… it was a matter of time. A thing like that starts a clock on you. I had to go somewhere else.”

Rusty bites his lip, changes lanes. They aren’t so far now. There’s traffic, but it’s moderate. They’re making good time. 

“I think you’d be a good Chief of Police,” Rusty says. “I think it’s a shame you didn’t get it.”

“Well, thanks,” she says. “But enough about me, okay? Tell me about you.” 

He chats about work for most of the drive. He works for the Press-Telegram in Long Beach and it’s a bit of a grind. but he’s earning his place and he knows it. He still makes YouTube videos but doesn’t have that much time, so earning money through that is slow going. 

“You’ve been coming out here a lot lately,” he says, just as they’re pulling into the parking garage. It comes out of nowhere, she’d been only half listening to him telling a story about one of his roommates seeing a shark while surfing. 

“Oh, I guess,” Brenda says. “Now that she’s not traveling for work so much.”

“I’m glad,” Rusty says. “It makes her happy. She seems happy.”

“Does she?” Brenda asks. It’s good to know. Even now, Sharon can be difficult to read. Brenda knows when she’s angry, that’s certainly not kept a secret, but in general she’s so even-keeled that figuring out how she’s really feeling at any given time is tricky. 

Asking seems obvious enough but Brenda knows what she’d do if someone asked straight out if she were happy and she wasn’t.

She’d lie. 

Sharon has made a brisket, wears her hair pulled back from her face and bright blue sweater over dark jeans. The whole condo smells like tender, buttery meat and Brenda is starving the moment the smell hits her. They have a routine now - a hug and a kiss, Brenda puts away her things, changes into some of the clothes she keeps in California, which she always finds clean and folded despite the state they were in when she last saw them. 

Rusty stays for several hours, through dinner and dessert which is a store bought boston cream pie. 

“Sorry,” Sharon says when she presents it. She’s apologetic because she hasn’t made it from scratch.

“Don’t be,” Brenda assures her. 

When Rusty leaves and the kitchen is clean, Sharon turns to her and says, “Do you want to take a shower?”

“Do I smell that bad?” Brenda asks.

“With me,” Sharon says. “Do you want to take a shower with me?”

“Yes,” Brenda says. 

Brenda is a bath person at heart, but Sharon’s shower is nicer than her tub in the guest bath and it’s big enough for both of them. Anyway, it’s not about getting clean - Brenda can tell from the way Sharon twists up her hair and clips it into place. She turns the water on hot, lets the bathroom fill up with steam. 

Brenda is even skinnier than her last trip, she knows it, but Sharon doesn’t say anything about it this time. Even though she runs her hands along Brenda’s ribs and her spine and the sharp bones of her hips as the water runs down them. She just can’t seem to put weight on, no matter how crappy she eats. It’s not the trash she feeds herself, it’s the volume she can’t manage, the ratio of calories to what she’s burning. 

“Brenda,” Sharon says, an even mix of worry and sadness. 

“I know, I know,” Brenda says. “None of my clothes fit right anymore.” 

“Did Hostess go out of business again?” Sharon asks, tucking her fingers into the grooves of her ribs. It tickles a little but Brenda doesn’t squirm. She holds her ground.

“No,” Brenda says, only a little bit hurt. Real deep down. Down where the water swirls by their feet, turning their toes red.

Sharon sighs, negotiates her body around and rests her chin on Brenda’s shoulder. Wraps herself all around Brenda, like the water, like the steam, like the heat coiling inside them both. 

oooo

How can she say no to a dying woman?

It’s what it comes down to. Erika is dying and she’s going fast and she wants Brenda and so Brenda says yes because it’s not like she’s happy. It’s not like she’s giving up something that makes her happy. 

She puts in her notice. She lets the people renting her daddy’s house in Atlanta know they need to vacate. 

She puts her townhouse on the market.

Then she calls Sharon.

“Honey, I can’t talk right now,” Sharon answers.

“I don’t need but five minutes,” Brenda says, trying to sound airy. “I took a new job in Atlanta. When you have a few minutes, give me a call and we can talk about it.”

“What?” Sharon says. “What? What job?”

“Chief of Police,” Brenda says “Okay, Bye now. Bye-bye.” 

“Brenda, wha-”

She hangs up. 

She has a real estate agent in DC, she hires movers. She hasn’t made many friends and the change in presidential administrations makes it all too easy to leave the federal government far behind her. 

It’s just about time for the cherry blossoms when she officially accepts the job and resigns her job in DC. Her first act of Chief of Police is going to be attending a funeral. 

But she’s getting ahead of herself.

Sharon is ten kinds of bent out of shape. Brenda has talk to her on the phone for over an hour and it’s not even a phone call, it’s a facetime. Rusty has it all set up so that Sharon doesn’t have to hold her ipad. Brenda’s left with her arm aching and her face at an unflattering angle. 

“Because I’m not sure what discussing it would have changed, I guess. Far away is far away,” Brenda says. That’s what it all boils down to. 

Sharon rubs at her face, already free of makeup. Rusty hovers in the background, in and out of frame. Spending the night at his mother’s request, no doubt. 

“Couples talk about things,” Sharon says. Brenda thought maybe she was almost free but it looks like one more ride around before bed.

“Yes,” Brenda says. “But she’s dying Sharon. Like, literally any second. And… I just… don’t want to work for Trump and I don’t want to sell my daddy’s house and I can’t move to LA so this seemed like… enough. It seemed enough.” 

“You’re okay with enough?” Sharon asks.

“Most people are,” Brenda says. She puts her face in her hand. “It’s done Sharon. You think you can fly out for the weekend and help me clean out my closet?” 

Brenda never asks Sharon to come out anymore. Sharon sits up, her face changes.

“Oh,” she says. “I’ll look at my calendar.”

“I’m already packing.” 

“Okay,” Sharon says. She nods. “I’ll make it work.” 

In a way, their whole lives are just flying back and forth. 

By the time Sharon comes, Brenda is just two weeks away from moving and the house is mostly packed up. Brenda has put the closet off purposefully so that she and Sharon will have something to do. And anyway she has stuff she probably won’t need in Atlanta. It gets cold, even snows from time to time, but she won’t have a winter like a D.C. winter. Maybe Sharon can help her weed some things out. 

Sharon is there, still, when Brenda gets the call that Erika has died. They’re going through her closet, piles of clothes everywhere. Sharon is sorting through the winter things, trying to decide what she’ll actually need.

“But it does snow in Atlanta,” Sharon says, looking at a faux fur lined parka.

“Two inches, maybe,” Brenda says as her phone starts to ring. It’s an unknown number, but it’s got an Atlanta area code, so she’s learned to answer those. “And not all at once - hello?”

Sharon realizes right away that it’s not a good phone call. 

“Okay,” Brenda says, already rubbing at her forehead where the headache is starting. “Yep, I can do that. Uh huh.” She can’t look at Sharon, who seems to be standing frozen holding that stupid parka. And she is only taking in half of what the woman is saying to her. “Can you just write down everything you said and send it to my email, just so I have it one place? Thank you. Take care. I’ll see you soon.”

She ends the call.

Brenda says, “Erika Shields passed away earlier today.” 

“What can I do?” Sharon asks. 

Brenda shrugs. “I don’t… I really didn’t know her well. I’ve already been announced. I think I just have to… be out there sooner? I think two weeks is too… I don’t know. Jesus, I don’t know.” 

“Do you have an assistant yet?” Sharon asks. Brenda nods.

“That was him.”

“We’ll contact him in the morning, then, because he’s going to have to navigate things until you arrive. But for tonight, I’m afraid there’s not much to be done. Let’s tackle it in the morning.” 

It’s good to have someone to go to bed with. After Fritz, Brenda had learned to truly love her alone time, her empty bedroom, not having to tiptoe around her own home. But now, this long distance thing gets more and more difficult because every time she gets to go to bed with Sharon, it feels so right.

Sharon holds her as she weeps into the darkness of the room. Maybe for a woman she hardly knew, a life being snuffed out too soon but Brenda is selfish and knows deep down that she’s just crying for herself, really. Because she’s scared of this new job, this responsibility, and of going home again.

oooo

It’s two more months before Brenda sees Sharon again. It’s a long two months. Erika’s assistant helps Brenda through the transition and then resigns about 40 days in. Brenda tries not to take it personally. Just goes about interviewing for a replacement while juggling constant meetings where she has to prove herself again and again. She’d thought Chief Shields handpicking Brenda to be her replacement would ease the transition somewhat, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. 

Maybe Brenda tries to change too much too fast but the things that need changing need changing badly and she’d rather rip off the band-aid quickly than drag it out. Especially when it comes to racist practices and police brutality. 

There’s a Major running the Office of Professional Standards and Brenda makes it a point to talk to him face to face, let him know that she’s going to be a supporter of the department, a vocal one, and that she takes Internal Affairs very seriously. 

It doesn’t take long for the whole police force to get the idea that Brenda means business, that she’s cleaning up a mess she didn’t make, and that she won’t apologize for any of it. 

She comes in early and leaves late because she has a lot to do but also because living in her parent’s house is weird.

“You just need to remodel it,” Sharon says on the phone. Brenda usually calls on her lunch hour and gets Sharon maybe twice a week. They talk on the weekends as well and text during the day, but Brenda treasures these little midday catch-ups. 

“When am I gonna find time to do that?” Brenda snorts.

“You don’t need time, you just need money. Hire a designer, hire a contractor, let them do it.” 

Sharon always makes things sound easy enough, but even making phone calls outside of the scope of her job can feel impossible.

The house is a strange mixture of Brenda’s own furniture and some pieces that had belonged to her parents that had just come along with the rental. She’d gotten rid of the couch in the family room because that had been well and truly trashed by the family who’d been living here before, but the olden wooden hutch in the dining room had been her maternal grandmother’s and the bedframe in the guestroom had once belonged to her youngest brother. 

The carpets need to go, the kitchen is hopelessly out of date and there’s wallpaper in half the rooms of this house. She wishes she could make it look like the little bungalow she’d first bought when she moved to LA. Dark wood, built-ins, craftsman windows. She’s forever yearning to get back to that particular time in her life - before she’d gotten married, before the Johnson rule.

“Fritz always thought I should have sold this house right away,” Brenda had said to Sharon earlier. “If I had then I could have just bought something I liked that was finished.”

“You want me to run downstairs and tell him that he was right all along?” Sharon had offered.

“No thank you to that,” Brenda had said. 

“I will help you next week,” Sharon says now with a laugh.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Brenda says, not for the first time. “I’m just… real desperate to see you.” 

“Oh,” Sharon says. “Right back at you, Chief.” 

Brenda wants to spend another twenty minutes on the phone even if it’s just listening to Sharon breathe and type, but there’s a gentle knock on Brenda’s door that she’s started to learn well. Her new executive assistant, Keisha Williams, is the best thing that Atlanta has given Brenda so far. She’s smart, she’s competent, and she keeps Brenda on time. Brenda’s previous assistant, a very nice man ten years her senior had left a list of replacements that he personally recommended. The list had been five names, all white men. She’d scrapped that right away. Keisha had come from another department; in fact Brenda thinks she might have unintentionally poached her from one of the Assistant Chiefs, but Keisha had applied for the transfer so Brenda doesn’t feel one way or another about all that. 

“Time’s up,” Brenda says into the phone now. “She knocked.” 

“Sorry Miss Sharon,” Keisha calls loud enough for Sharon to hear through the phone.

“Can’t wait to meet her,” Sharon says. “Bye.”

“Bye bye,” Brenda says and replaces the phone into the cradle. 

“Okay,” Keisha says. “You have budget and finance in five minutes and then they wanted to know if you could stop by before the end of the day and say hello to the new class of trainees.”

“Of course,” Brenda says, standing and smoothing out the skirt of her uniform. She’d had to specially order the pencil skirt version, apparently no one had ordered it since the nineties. But it has quickly become her signature. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution likes to run little unflattering political cartoons of her in her pencil skirt uniform and heels sweeping out corruption from underneath the foundation of City Hall while simultaneously running pleasant articles and op-eds about how a gay white woman is trying to save the city single-handedly. 

Fritz had texted her a picture of a particular article, though where he’d found it, she wasn’t sure. Online, maybe. It had a picture of her, called her a lesbian right in the headline. He’d said, _This is going great for me, thanks._

She thinks maybe he’d been joking but she just doesn’t give two shits about how her post-divorce life is making him feel. She’d sent him a thumbs up emoji and had not received a reply. And Sharon often reminds her that while she and Fritz rarely interact, they sometimes do and he never says anything at all about Brenda to her. 

“And Deputy Chief Lawrence would like five minutes at some point today,” Keisha says.

“Sure, I can just fabricate time out of nothing, no problem,” she says. 

Keisha smiles, her white teeth perfectly straight. “Shall I let him know to get bent, ma’am?”

“No, no,” Brenda says benevolently. “I’m sure I can figure that out.” 

oooo

It’s ten after seven before Brenda gets back to her office, her poor feet aching. It’s just that the uniform in pants looks like it’s actively swallowing her alive and the uniform with the skirt looks stupid with flats. She doesn’t mind heels, but she’s getting older and her ability to run around in them all day is diminishing. She says as much to Sharon in a text message as she rides the elevator back up to her office. 

_You’re the Chief of Police, make people run to you._

She chews on that while she runs her finger down the phone list and dials Deputy Chief Lawrence’s extension. She expects it to ring through, she’s going to leave a message that if he really wants five minutes, it’s best to get on her schedule so Keisha can arrange it, but Lawrence picks up. Lawrence oversees the Field Operations Division, a big job but a low title for a man in his mid-to-late sixties. She’s been a little worried about him gunning for a promotion to Assistant Chief because there isn’t a vacant Assistant Chief position to be had. 

“Chief Johnson,” he says. “How nice of you to call.”

“I didn’t expect you to still be in,” she says. “You wanted five minutes?”

“Yes,” he says. “If you stay right there, I’ll come to you. Walk you to your car.” 

“Sure,” she says. It seems quaint, but also very southern. She’d stuck out as a southern sore thumb in Los Angeles. DC was full of transplants so she hadn’t felt so starkly out of place there, but it’s only now that she’s back in Atlanta that she realizes that she’d acclimated to life outside of the Bible Belt. That the things she’d once considered normal here now seem quaint and silly and slow-paced. 

When he arrives, he’s got his things as well. It feels like permission to pack up and head home and that is nice. 

“What can I do for you?” she asks, when he makes a comment about the weather. It doesn’t seem like five minutes are going to be enough to meander around to his point. He smiles at her.

“Chief, I was very friendly with Chief Shields. She was friends with my wife, our families were friendly.”

“Ah,” Brenda says. “Well, then I’m particularly sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says. “I have to admit the only motive I had was that my wife Effie let me know that I should make it a point to welcome you back to Atlanta and to let you know that we’re glad you’re here. It’s not easy to step into the shoes of a dead woman. May she rest in peace.” 

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Brenda says. “Give my regards to your wife, won’t you?”

“I will. I’d like to extend an invitation to you, on her behalf, and mine,” Lawrence says. “Dinner.”

“You want me to come to dinner?” Brenda asks, surprised enough that it comes out without much thought.

“Do people not invite others over in Los Angeles?” he asks with a chuckle.

She laughs, too. The great irony. Everyone in LA could never let the fact that she was from Georgia go and now she’s been gone long enough that everyone in Georgia treats her like she’s from somewhere else. 

“It’s just the first invitation I’ve received since I’ve moved back, that’s all,” she says. “I would love to have dinner with you and your wife.” 

“Bring your partner, too,” he says. “If she’s around.” 

“She’ll be here next week,” Brenda says, feeling her cheeks burn. She isn’t used to talking about it. About Sharon. “Too soon?”

“No ma’am,” he says. 

“Set it up with Keisha,” she says. “And thank you.”

She watches him head away from her, toward the other side of the parking garage. She’s not naive enough to think there isn’t _something_ that he wants even if it isn’t from her directly. There’s value in simply being able to say that the Chief is a friend. But she hadn’t lied to him. She’d received very little in the way of friendly invitations since coming back to Atlanta. Any friends she’d once had here are long gone or bad for her politically and she just isn’t interested in making friends for the sake of it. She has so little free time. She uses it to eat and sleep and talk to Sharon on the phone, when she can. 

She hopes Sharon doesn’t mind being trotted out, she hopes Sharon is proud at Brenda for accepting the invitation. She thinks maybe she will be but Sharon can be hard to read, even after all this time. 

oooo

Sharon had made herself at home in Brenda’s DC townhouse but she’s very strange in the house in Atlanta. She seems uncomfortable, like she’s a guest in the home of a friend of a friend. She’s been to the house, she’s seen it, but they were still installing the new carpet last time and the movers were in and out and so they’d spent that night in a hotel and then Sharon had gone right back to LA. 

Now she perches uneasily on the edge of furniture, asks before touching anything, declines Brenda’s offer of tea when she almost always accepts upon arrival.

“I’m making you tea,” Brenda says anyway. “You’re being weird.”

It’s several hours before Brenda understands the reason for it. She tries to kiss Sharon in the kitchen, backs her up against the counter covered with old, square tiles and dirty grout. 

Sharon ducks out of the way and it hurts Brenda’s feelings. 

“What is going on with you?” Brenda demands. It’s been months, she’s itching to touch Sharon, to bury her face in her fragrant hair, to slide their skin together. 

“I just… this house reminds me of your mother,” she says. “I feel like she’s watching us.”

“You met her _once_ ,” Brenda says. 

“I know,” Sharon says. “This is just all… when I think about you at home, I still picture DC. I’m just adjusting to all this change. You always manage to land somewhere impressive and I’m still… coming to terms with that.”

“Land somewhere impressive even though I don’t deserve it, you mean,” Brenda says. 

“I absolutely did not say that!” Sharon says. She crosses her arms tightly enough that Brenda takes another step back. “I’m only saying, I’m in my sixties and I feel as though I ought to be further along in my career and you’re ten years younger than me and the Chief of Police of a major city. I just get embarrassed, that’s all.”

Brenda lets out a chuckle of disbelief. “Honey, Los Angeles is the second biggest city in the country. Atlanta is thirty-seventh. And the LAPD chewed me up and spit me out and you’ve made Assistant Chief. That’s impressive. My career is littered with ethics inquiries and resignations and transfers to avoid somethin’ worse. I certainly don’t have the impeccable reputation you do.” 

“I want to retire,” Sharon says. “I don’t want to do this forever.”

“Okay,” Brenda says. “You can’t be that far off to a doable retirement.”

“I mean this,” Sharon says. “This back and forth. I don’t want to do this forever. And I had… this is so stupid. I’d come to peace with leaving Los Angeles for DC if it meant being with you but I don’t… want to live in Georgia.” 

It feels like whiplash, this conversation, but at least now the truth has bubbled to the surface. This was why Sharon had pitched such a fit about Brenda not talking to her about taking the job, first. Sharon has a few years until retirement at least, but it will be much longer for Brenda. Brenda doesn’t have to stay in Atlanta forever, but she’ll have to clock a good chunk of time and then, if she does get a comparable or better job elsewhere, there’s not telling where that elsewhere might be and the chances of it being in LA - California, even, are slim. Brenda can come visit LA more, then, if Sharon hates Georgia so much, but even internally, just words in her own mind, she knows that’s a lie. She’ll be busy she’s always busy.

Sharon watches her cycle through all their options and then says, “Yeah,” with such a tone of resignation that tears spring to Brenda’s eyes.

“So, then, you came all this way to break up with me?” Brenda asks. 

“No,” Sharon says, finally leaning back against the tile. “I don’t want that but I also don’t… really know what’s going to happen and that makes me very anxious.”

“No one does,” Brenda says.

“I know that.”

“And that could be five years from now,” Brenda accuses.

“I’m simply being honest with you, Brenda Leigh,” Sharon says. “This thing has been long distance from the start and it’s really hard and we don’t ever talk about that! And it helped me to have some sort of long term plan to work toward and it feels like that’s gone now.”

“You ain’t hardly spent any time here at all!” Brenda says. “You might find that you like it.”

Sharon shrugs. “Maybe.” 

“This isn’t my dream house either, you know, but selling two houses and buying a new one at the same time I started a job was too much,” Brenda says holding her hand up. “You couldn’t ask that of anyone.” 

Sharon nods in agreement. “I know.”

“And you raised three children while I was climbing the ladder. You think I’d be here if I’d had a family? I don’t think so.” 

Sharon nods again, wipes at the delicate skin under her eyes, dislodging her glasses momentarily. 

“It is hard,” Brenda says. “I ain’t… ever been in love like this before, though, so I just thought it was worth it, I guess.”

“It is,” Sharon says, her voice breaking. She relents, moves forward to press against Brenda. She hides her face in Brenda’s shoulder and Brenda puts her arms around her, holds her as she cries. Sharon is hard to read, tends to bottle things up and then dump everything into Brenda’s lap all at once. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad if they saw each other every day, though Brenda wouldn’t put money on it. Fritz had wanted to talk all the time, had wanted to dissect every detail constantly. Brenda likes that Sharon doesn’t have to process everything together all the time but now she knows she can’t ignore it, either. 

The sun has set now, though it’s not late enough for bed. It’s late enough for wine, though, and the big slice of chocolate cake they’d brought home from the restaurant where they’d eaten dinner. Sharon seem a little better, then, with the wine in her and the cake and when they finally go upstairs to bed, she looks at the master bedroom with a new pair of eyes. Brenda had brought her own bedroom set, the ensuite is big and has a wide tub. Brenda had replaced all the towels, the bath mats, and other accessories when she’d moved. Her DC bathroom had been small and she’d been ready for a change. So long to the gray bath mats and towels, hello to lilac. 

“This room isn’t so bad, really,” Sharon says, looking things over. 

It feels like a win, anyway. One thing she can tolerate and she hasn’t officially dumped Brenda. What passes for a win these days.

oooo

Effie Lawrence makes them both feel right at home immediately. Sharon had been gracious about going to the dinner with Brenda’s subordinate, understands that even though she’s a decorated officer in her own right, none of that matters in this city. Here’s she’s the partner of the Chief of Police. Here, she’s a political statement as much as she’s anything else. 

She has to borrow one of Brenda’s dresses because Brenda hadn’t forewarned her of this event and so she didn’t pack for it. Sharon is taller, a little broader, but Brenda’s bust is bigger so as far as clothes go, they’re pretty on par. Sharon picks a black sheath dress with a gold zipper up the back. It’s just a tiny bit short on her, but Brenda likes seeing a little knee. Sharon has great legs. 

Deputy Chief Lawrence lives in a two-story house in a decent neighborhood, though the houses are close together and the street is lined with cars. They have to park a block away and walk up to the house. 

“You could have parked in the driveway,” is the first thing Mrs. Lawrence says because she’s waiting for them out on the wrap around porch. 

“Oh, that’s all right. We could use the steps,” Brenda says, falling into a heavier accent. 

“Come on in,” Mrs. Lawrence says. “We’ve been expectin’ ya.” 

Brenda can see Sharon’s suppressed smile, could see it from space. Northerners always find things heavily southern so condescendingly quaint. Manners, the fact that people don’t rush through things, for instance. That had always been the hardest transition for Brenda when she left the south for some new corner of the country. How cold and clipped everyone in California was. Like they were in a hurry and she was standing in their way. 

“We’re just so thrilled to make your acquaintance,” Brenda says, stepping onto the porch. Effie Lawrence is older, heavier, and beautiful. She has big features that set well together, beautiful skin, long braids that are swept up and pinned away from her round face. She has on a long flowy dress, yellow with a geometric pattern. Brenda feels suddenly stuffy in her skirt and blouse, Sharon in her black dress. When she gets within arm’s reach, she extends her hand and says, “Brenda Johnson.”

Mrs. Lawrence smirks, shakes Brenda’s hand as if she’s an alien.

“I know who ya are, Chief,” she says. “And this beautiful creature must be Miss Sharon?”

“Thank you for having us,” Sharon says. 

Brenda isn’t sure how it happens, but Sharon steps up and embraces Mrs. Lawrence in a hug that seems like the most natural thing in the world. Sharon is always better at social interactions. Brenda can be disarmingly charming if she has to be but it’s always an act, an effort, and she has to watch for a while to pick up the right cues. It’s not natural like Sharon. 

“Come on in,” she says. “Terry is inside makin’ sure everything is perfect for the Chief.” 

“Oh, I’m sure it’s going to be fine, Mrs. Lawrence,” Brenda says. 

“Effie, please,” she says. “Ain’t nobody gonna eat at my table and call me Mrs.” 

For as warm as his invitation was, Terry Lawrence is clearly more nervous than his wife. He’s going to ask for something, maybe. Wants something. Brenda isn’t sure what it is. The promotion maybe, the one that doesn’t exist. More money, more of something. Clout or bragging rights. It doesn’t matter. Brenda has very little to give him and she’s giving it now - her presence in his home, her friendly conversation, this peek into her personal life. 

Sharon must have had her hair done right before she’d come out to Atlanta because it’s rich and dark at the roots, auburn out through the ends. The way Brenda likes it best. Brenda can always tell when Sharon is stressed out and short on time because she lets her hair get faded and orange. 

But Brenda thinks she wouldn’t mind it if Sharon let all that dark, luxurious hair go gray, as she sometimes spots growing out in her part and at the nape of her pale neck. Wouldn’t mind that at all. 

Effie and Terry serve a wedge salad covered with blue cheese and burnt ends that melt in her mouth. Sharon likes it too, cleans her plate which is unusual because she’s picky and almost leaves something behind. She eats like a bird. It’s infuriating. 

She’s not shy, though, and asks a lot of thoughtful questions about the force and Atlanta and life here and the Lawrence family. Brenda chimes in with statistics when someone needs some figures to compare to the LAPD figures Sharon carries in her head from a lifetime of work. 

It impresses Terry Lawrence that Brenda can pull statistics out of her brain like that, says so. 

“You’ve only been back with us a short time, after all. A lot can change in ten years.” 

It’s been twelve but she doesn’t correct him. 

“She works hard to persuade people otherwise, but Chief Johnson is very smart,” Sharon says with a coy smile. “She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

The compliment certainly soothes the burn, anyway. Sharon’s never told her that before. Brenda is certain she isn’t the smartest person anyone’s ever met, but she pats Sharon’s hand on the table anyway.

“Sweet talker,” she says. 

They stay for a lemon meringue pie which is fine, but would never make Brenda’s top five dessert choices, and a cup of coffee. It’s so late, dark now, and Brenda can only pray the coffee is decaf but she strongly suspects it’s not.

That’s why, when they say their thank yous and goodbyes and make their way back to the car, Brenda feels awake and alert. A little surprised when Sharon slips her hand into Brenda’s once they’re out of range of the yellow porch light. And even more surprised, though happily, when in the car Sharon puts her hand on Brenda’s knee and slides it up and under the fabric of her skirt and says, “Take me home, Brenda Leigh.” 

It’s a good twenty-five minutes to get back to the house and Sharon smolders the whole time, sending long glances at Brenda while her fingers pressed into Brenda’s skin. It feels like ages before Brenda even gets to her neighborhood, let alone to her driveway.

At one point Sharon says, “I can feel you clenching your thighs.” And her voice is low, soft and it goes right to the heart of things, in fact Brenda clenches again the moment she says it and has to make a noise of frustration. 

“Yeah, well,” is all Brenda can manage. 

When she finally pulls in to the drive, she cuts the engines, kills the headlights and undoes her seatbelt as quickly as possible, so she can reach out and slide her hand around the nape of Sharon’s neck. She pulls, angling her body just so, just so their mouths meet. 

Brenda kisses her and kisses her, warm and desperate and antsy. 

Finally Sharon pulls back, laughing a little, wiping her mouth. “Let’s go inside.” 

Brenda makes impatient huff and flings her door open, hauling herself out and slamming the car door behind her. She’s gotta dig through her purse to find her keys. Sharon takes them from her, gets the key in the lock on the first try. 

They’d made love once since Sharon had arrived but they’d both been tired and a little tiny bit out of sorts from their argument about Atlanta and the future and what could or could not happen. It had been good, with Sharon it’s always good, but there was a part of it that felt a little bit like a chore. Like they had to because it had been so long, despite the fact that they were unsettled and scared. 

But this feels more like the joyous reunion that Brenda is used to after months apart. Like the first time, when Brenda had gotten her off in that bedroom in her Virgina townhouse and then gone to work only to spend the entire, distracted day thinking about what’d she’d do to Sharon Raydor when she got home. 

In the house they drop purses and kick off shoes and kiss their way up the stairs in the dark. Of course Brenda doesn’t want to flip on the hall light, illuminate the dated light fixtures and starkly new carpet and ruffled curtains along the way. The bedroom is certainly more neutral territory and by the time they get through the door, Brenda has unzipped the long gold zipper on the borrowed black dress and unhooked Sharon’s bra so her back is free for Brenda’s hands to roam. 

Sharon pushes both garments off and lets them drop, stepping out of the pile they become.

“Off,” Sharon barks at her. Sharon’s managed to undo about a third of the button’s on Brenda’s blouse but the outfit is simply more complicated: buttons, a hook-and-eye on the side of the skirt along with a clear button and a zipper. Sheer hose, an unfortunate staple of the professional south no matter what the temperature rises to. It’s difficult to focus on her task when Sharon is in nothing but a pair of black briefs, stripping the bed of covers in the dark. It’s almost worse in the dark - Brenda can see just hints of delicious things. Swaying breasts, wild hair, pale skin in the moonlight. Sharon has to come back and help shimmy the skirt down off her hips, has to push the blouse to the floor. 

Brenda always has a plan of action. What she’ll touch, where she’ll go but part of the attraction with Sharon is that she never can predict exactly what’s to come. Brenda’s made a career of having all the answers before she even begins, so for her, Sharon’s ability to surprise her is a real treat. 

Sharon lets Brenda think she’s in charge for a little while. Brenda kisses where she pleases, gets a handful of Sharon’s breasts, pushes down the dark, lacy briefs for access to skin across all regions. But it doesn’t take long for Brenda to find herself on her back, Sharon on top of her, one of those perfectly shaped legs wedged between both of hers. 

It’s nearly unbelievable. She’s found herself twice divorced and on the wrong side of fifty and here she is, naked in her bed with Sharon Raydor. A woman she’d thought about daily since the moment she’d laid eyes on her. A woman she’d hated and then tolerated and then grudgingly respected. A woman she’d continued to think about long after there was a whole country between them, who’d she’d texted drunk off half a bottle of wine and then made up a vague reason for it. 

She can’t believe her luck. That Sharon had even texted her back, had kept texting her, had called her, had agreed to spend a weekend in San Francisco with her, had climbed gamely into that bathtub, who’d kissed her back. 

Her sheer dumb luck combined with Sharon’s thigh against her is enough to send her spiraling into the first little fluttering orgasm. Nothing epic, nothing she can’t handle with clenched teeth and a grunt, but enough that it doesn’t go by unnoticed. Sharon pushes her hair back from her face and says, “I’m going to lick you until you scream.” 

Sharon, who’d never even kissed a woman before. Sharon who had fallen for Brenda so slowly and steadily over the screens of their phones that her own queerness had been a somewhat startling surprise. How that unsteady and unsure Sharon became the Sharon who has her head between Brenda’s legs and her tongue in Brenda’s cunt in just a couple short years is still a wonderful mystery. 

Brenda comes again, never doubted that she would. Sharon is meticulous and thorough in all things including sex, doesn’t mind having Brenda’s fingers tangled in her hair pulling on her scalp. Now, this orgasm blows the roof off and Sharon is true to her word, Brenda does roar her way through it. She has to pant for awhile after, let the sweat cool on her skin, hears her own voice sound raw when she finally says, “Come up here.” 

She pulls Sharon close, kisses her, pets her tangled hair. 

“I love you,” she says. 

“I love you, too,” Sharon replies. 

“Maybe we should always have coffee after four pm,” Brenda comments, giving Sharon’s back a loud pat. 

“Oh I’ll tire you out, Chief,” Sharon says. “If that’s what you want.” 

“Don’t be a show off,” Brenda grouses. And to shut her up, she resumes kissing her.

Kisses her and kisses her until once more Sharon drags her mouth away. “Touch me,” she begs. 

Brenda does. Between Sharon’s legs is a longed for oasis, a garden of eden. Nothing hard or harsh or insistent. Brenda’s fingers slide right in, slide all around, are welcomed and longed for. 

Brenda had married both of her husbands because it had seemed the easiest thing to do, each time but had turned out to be the most difficult road by far. But this really is easy and lovely and light. Sharon’s forearm across her eyes, the moonlight on her skin making her seem otherworldly, her splayed legs betraying her flexible past as a dancer. Brenda watches her own fingers dip in and out at a quick, but not frantic pace, one designed to keep her suspended in pleasure for so long that it becomes just the edge of pain. 

And when Sharon’s cries turn desperate, broken gasps and half sobs and frustrated moans, when her perfectly manicured nails start scratching at the bedsheets in time with Brenda’s thrusts, when her hair gets wet at the temples and her whole body twitches with the effort of hanging suspended at the lip of getting almost, but not quite, enough, only then does Brenda relent. 

She keeps thrusting her fingers but also presses her thumb against Sharon’s woefully neglected clitoris. 

Doesn’t take long after that.

Sharon whimpers all through it like it’s torture, but Brenda knows better than that. She thinks of those whimpers all the time when she’s lonely or bored or just wants to stick a hand down her own sweatpants. The most beautiful sound in the world. 

Sharon had talked a big game, but at this age neither have more than one big orgasm in them. They’re both tired and sated. They murmur about a bath but settle on a shower. No one washes their hair, just their makeup off and their bodies and then they lean draped against one another under the spray until Sharon finally reaches out to turn off the tap. 

“I love you.” Sharon says it first this time. 

“I love you, too,” Brenda replies and sighs into Sharon’s clean, damp neck. 

oooo

To say that Brenda can’t ever come to Los Angeles again because she is the higher ranking would just be unfair and unkind so Brenda flies out for the long Memorial Day weekend. Chief of Police or not, she hasn’t accrued much vacation time yet so she has to act strategically. 

She gets herself to Sharon’s condo alone this time because Rusty isn’t around and Sharon is working. Some big SWAT operation downtown. Brenda is curious but tries not to ask any questions or look up any news alerts because then she’ll just want to get involved. And for the sake of their relationship, she shouldn’t do that. 

She has a key to the condo and lets herself in. Does her normal routine - takes a shower, changes clothes, orders Chinese takeout from the place she misses most when Sharon texts and says it’s gonna be awhile longer. 

_News trucks are here_ is the last text Brenda had gotten. 

She almost turns on the TV. Almost does it and catches herself. 

She’s gotta fill the time, so she calls Charlie and they talk for almost an hour. She’s about to graduate from Loyola and Brenda wants her to move back to Atlanta. 

“You can stay with me in Grandma’s house,” Brenda says. “Won’t charge ya rent or nothin’.”

“Maybe,” Charlie says noncommittally. Brenda tries not to take that personally. She knows Charlie is hoping to get a job she’d applied for in Nashville, but if she doesn’t she’ll have to move home and regroup.

“Or I guess you could go live with your mama and daddy again,” Brenda says.

“I mean, obviously you,” Charlie says. “And Sharon some day.” 

Now it’s Brenda’s turn to be evasive. “Maybe,” she says. 

“Am I keeping you from an episode of the L-Word right now?” Charlie asks. “Do you have to go?”

“Very funny,” Brenda says. “She’s workin’ late.”

“How the tables have turned,” Charlie says. “How does it feel?”

“To be the one at home in sweatpants and no bra? Not as bad as you’d think,” Brenda says. “But I’ll let you go, sugar.” 

“Okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon,” Charlie promises. 

“Bye.” Brenda hangs up and glances at the clock. It’s just after nine. Not that late - later for her with the time change but she won’t sleep until Sharon comes home. She scrolls through her contacts list until she finds the number she needs.

Julio answers on the third ring. “Hi, Chief.”

“You workin’ this SWAT op too?” she asks, getting up to stand at Sharon’s sliding glass doors and look out at the lights. She can’t see any helicopters or anything but she’s probably just facing the wrong direction. 

“It’s a mess, but not so bad that they pulled us in,” Julio says. 

“You want to come over?” she asks. 

“Uh,” Julio says, clearly thinking about it.

“I have enough Chinese food for an army,” she says.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “Twenty minutes.” 

She chuckles. Twenty minutes in LA could mean anything, twenty minutes in LA means he’ll see her when he sees her. 

“Bye, Julio,” she says. 

She goes through the kitchen, sees what there is. Sharon has two beers in the door that look leftover from the last time she was here and Julio came for dinner, plus two bottles of white wine chilling and, on the counter next to the refrigerator, one of those wine mix and match six packs of wine from Trader Joe’s, all full of merlot. 

Brenda feels a wave of affection. Sharon doesn’t even really like red wine all that much. 

She uncorks one and lets it breathe for about ten minutes, figures that’s good enough before pouring herself a whopper of a glass. 

By the time Sharon gets home, just before midnight, Brenda and Julio are sitting out on the balcony, getting tipsy. Brenda’s nearly finished a whole bottle on her own and Julio has drank both of Sharon’s beers and half of the six pack he’d arrived with for himself. 

“Oh, it’s a party,” Sharon says. She looks tired and Brenda feels immediately guilty about laughing her way through the evening with Julio half drunk while Sharon worked. She’s in her uniform - she’d made fun of Brenda’s specially ordered pencil skirts at first but when she’d realized she could order some of her own right out of the catalog and it wouldn’t even be a hassle, she’d switched over. Brenda likes it a lot better than the dumpy slacks. 

“Hi, baby,” Brenda says. 

Sharon narrows her eyes a little. 

“You’ll have to catch up, ma’am,” Julio says, hanging his head a little. 

“I’m going to go change,” Sharon says.

Brenda scrambles up out of her chair and sets her wine glass down on the little wrought iron table that she nearly tips it and smashes it everywhere.

“Easy,” Julio mutters.

She rights it and then follows Sharon inside, shutting the door and heading for the bedroom where Sharon is undoing the buttons of her blouse. 

“Hi,” she says again, breathlessly.

Sharon’s hands still for just a moment and then continues. “Did you have a good flight?”

“It was fine,” Brenda says. Sharon yanks the shirt out from her skirt and discards it, struggles for a moment to undo the button of her skirt. Brenda feels awkward, waiting for a hug. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

“I think I’m just going to go to bed,” Sharon says.

“Oh,” Brenda says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Going to bed?” Sharon asks, finally getting out of the skirt. She gathers up the pieces of her uniform and sets them on the top of her dresser. 

“I mean… the… your work,” Brenda settles on lamely. 

“No, that’s okay, go see Julio. I’ll come say goodnight,” Sharon says. 

It’s so dismissive, how she says it, that Brenda just turns and leaves the bedroom confused and drunk enough to be wounded for it. And then, when she emerges from the bedroom, Julio is standing there with his jacket on.

“It was so nice to see you, Chief,” he says. She’s been trying to get him just to call her Brenda, for crying out loud, for years now, but she is a chief again, always finds herself being the chief of one thing or another, so he won’t.

“You don’t have to leave,” she says.

“It’s late,” he says politely.

“Well, are you good to drive?” she asks.

“Lyft,” he says, holding up his phone. She doesn’t really know what the screen means, so she has to take his word for it.

“All right,” she says. He endures her embrace. On his way out, he calls, “Adios, jefa!”

“Bye!” Sharon’s voice floats out from the hall. 

Brenda busies herself with washing and sobering up. She puts the empty bottles in the recycling box, loads her dirty dishes into the dishwasher, puts away the leftovers. 

“You okay?” Sharon asks when she comes out in her pajama shorts and a long sleeved shirt. 

“Are you hungry?” Brenda says. “There’s some food left, not a ton.”

“I ate pizza in the tent,” Sharon admits. “Thanks though.” 

The kitchen is clean, so she can’t do that anymore. She turns to face Sharon, leans against the counter with her arms crossed. 

“You must be tired,” Sharon says. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Brenda hadn’t answered either way the first time she’d asked. She is okay, just jostled from the unexpected. Usually when Julio, Brenda, and Sharon get together, they’re giggly, relaxed. It’s fun. 

“Yeah,” Brenda says. “Let’s just go to bed.” 

Tomorrow is a new day, after all.

Maybe fun is out of their reach while they’re still working, while they’re two of the highest ranking female police officers in the county. 

“Have you ever thought about going for Chief of Police?” Brenda asks when they’re climbing into bed, the room softly lit by only the lamp on Sharon’s bedside table. 

Sharon snorts. 

“I’m serious,” Brenda says.

“My scoff was serious, too,” Sharon says. 

“Are you not interested or do you not think you could get it?” 

“I don’t know, both?” Sharon says. “It doesn’t matter. Will Pope has is claws so deep in this town that he’ll have to die and I, frankly, am not interested in working for that much longer.” 

“But you could do it,” Brenda says. “You’re qualified to be the Chief of Police.” 

“I’m qualified to do a lot of things,” Sharon says. “I just… want to sleep.”

Brenda doesn’t push it. She’s tired too. But still, it’s difficult to drop off, even with the room dark, even with Sharon snoring softly beside her. What sleep she does get is fitful and restless. She dreams of her mama, which is never good. They’re never happy dreams. They always leave her feeling guilty and out of time. She wakes up with a gnawing sensation, like something that lives next door to hunger but is much, much worse.

She gets out of bed around five am, groggy and exhausted but still on east coast time. Sharon’s immaculate condo greets her, dull and muted in the early morning light. Clean counters, throw blankets folded just so, no shoes on the rug or glasses in the sink or dust on the surfaces. 

It had taken Brenda a long time to realize Sharon’s perfection was as much about Brenda’s perception of her as anything. Sure, Sharon is neater than her by nature, but she also has a cleaning service come in twice a week, she has groceries delivered, she has an HOA to deal with things Brenda has to deal with herself. 

She makes a full pot of coffee and a piece of toast which she slathers in butter and then sprinkles cinnamon and sugar all over. It’s habit, at home, to turn on the news while she gets ready for the day, but she doesn’t want to do that here, so she sits at the dining table and eats her sweet toast and slurps at her sweet coffee while she scrolls through her email on her phone.

Keisha is a dream when it comes to sorting things for her. Brenda has a direct work email that isn’t public but that everyone seems to have and then a generic Chief email that goes just to her general office. Keisha has access to both and sorts things into folders for her. Things she needs to look at ASAP, things that she needs to look at when she gets back, and things that can wait. Today is a good day. Her ASAP folder only has three new things. 

It’s only an hour later when Sharon comes out, wrapped up in her terry cloth robe.

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” she says, sinking tiredly into one of the rust colored armchairs. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Brenda says. “You don’t have to get up, it’s early.”

“Eh,” she says with a yawn. “Once I wake up, I’m up.” 

Brenda tosses her phone on the couch next to her and says, “I’m gonna get you some coffee.” 

Sharon allows this, takes the mug and the kiss on her forehead that comes with it. She’s quiet for a bit and then says, “I’m sorry I’ve been in a bit of a funk.”

“Have you?” Brenda asks. 

“We lost someone I used to work with in Internal Affairs.” Sharon shrugs a shoulder, her eyes well up.

“Oh honey,” Brenda says. “In the SWAT thing last night? You didn’t say anything?”

Sharon shakes her head. “No, no, no, not last night. She… it was cancer. I just heard a couple days ago.” 

“We could’ve talked about it,” Brenda says.

“I’m talking about it now,” Sharon says. “I’m just sad about it. She was 53.”

“Jesus.”

Sharon wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “I was never great at making friends in this force so it’s tough to lose one.”

Brenda is still not great at making friends, but she seems to be inexplicably better at it than Sharon is. Friends make her, anyway, people seem to orbit around her. Sharon is smart and pretty but she’s not as charming as Brenda and they both know it and Brenda has spent her professional life honing her charm into a deadly weapon. That’s why Brenda is Chief of Police and Sharon is as high as she’ll ever climb probably; that’s why Brenda has the Johnson rule and Sharon’s record is pristine. 

But Atlanta has been tough. It’s lonely at the top and while she can be friendly toward and with people, the Lawrences for example, a real friend would have to come from outside the police force and she just doesn’t have time for that. 

“I get it,” Brenda says. She pats the couch next to her and Sharon comes over, sliding down the length of the cushions and letting Brenda hold her tight. They don’t stay there long - maybe ten minutes before Sharon gets up, wipes her face, gives Brenda a smile and says, “I’m going to take a shower.”

Sometimes that’s a code, an invitation. Brenda follows her in and they spend some time in a slick and steamy embrace. 

Not this time, though. Sharon closes the bathroom door behind her and Brenda goes back to looking at her phone or the tops of the palm trees from way up on the eleventh floor.

oooo

Three officers get shot in Grove Park, so Brenda has to take the red eye back Sunday night instead of her early flight Monday morning. In the big scheme of things, the only difference it really makes is that Brenda will be at the office first thing Monday morning. It does rob her of one more night in Sharon Raydor’s bed so she spends the cross country flight kind of pissed off. 

Having officers die in the line of fire is not so unusual, especially in this time of policy overhaul, but three is the most who have been killed at once in Brenda’s short tenure. No, what makes her rush home is that the killings happened on the campus of Frederick Douglass high school, Grove Park’s most notable educational institution, known mostly for producing professional football players and rappers. 

Brenda had gone to the more affluent Grady High School in Candler Park, where her parents had first lived when they’d moved back to Georgia for the last time, her father’s military career behind him. That house had been charming, but too small, ultimately, and so when they’d gotten a little more established, they’d moved to the Buckhead neighborhood that Brenda lives in now. Brenda had begged not to change schools and so she’d had to commute six months by bus until she’d gotten her driver’s license. 

This is important because while Erika Shields had sold her as an Atlanta native, today she won’t be anything other than a rich white lady stepping onto a campus she doesn’t belong on in a neighborhood that is 95% African American. 

Anytime multiple officers die, it’s good to show up. To the crime scene, to the family homes. But when she arrives to her office in her uniform, her hair done up just so, Keisha says, “Ma’am, I don’t think you should go.”

“Pardon me?” Brenda asks. Keisha is smart and professional but she doesn’t offer her opinion on the way Brenda does her job. 

“To Douglass,” Keisha says. “I think you ought to send someone else.”

Brenda wants to snap at her, to tell her to mind her own business, but she waits for that wave of unattractive white privilege to just float on by and then, when she’s calmer, she says, “Do you not think it disrespectful if I don’t make an appearance?”

“I think perhaps sending Deputy Chief Lawrence might be the correct call, ma’am,” Keisha says. “He went to Douglass. I did, too.”

Brenda nods. “Okay. Last thing I want to do is make it worse.” 

It’s difficult to sit in her office while Terry Lawrence does the community healing on her behalf. She calls Sharon who only says, “Do whatever Keisha says.” 

And then she crafts a statement for the press talking about the bravery of the officers, the department’s continued efforts to move toward more transparent safety methods, and dodges the fact that a seventeen-year-old boy is in their lock up for shooting three officers and killing them. She can only say they can’t release details at this time. 

“Do you think it was just lucky shooting?” Brenda had asked Sharon. 

“Three times?”

Where does a young boy learn to shoot like that? And against armed officers, to boot. 

It’s going to be a mess for awhile. She didn’t even want this job, not really. She just wanted her previous job less. It’s the first time she sincerely wishes she didn’t take it, wishes she was still bogged down in the grinding wheel of the federal government doing very little and achieving less. 

It’s selfish, okay, but she can still want it. 

She calls Sharon back, her third call of the morning.

“What can you possibly want now?” Sharon answers with a chuckle. 

“I ain’t ever gonna ask you to move to Atlanta,” Brenda says. It feels important to tell Sharon this now, while the feelings are fresh and while she feels so sure about it. “When you retire, I’ll quit this job and come to you. Make it work. Hand to heart.”

“Honey,” Sharon says. “You don’t need to be thinking about that now.”

“I know but I just want you to know that.”

“Okay,” Sharon says. “But...okay.”

_But what would you do here?_

Brenda can hear the question in the small pause that Sharon had tried to cover up. It doesn’t matter what she’d do. Nothing. Something. Write a book, consult on a television show, sell her house and buy two condos with the money. Rent one out for a jacked up rate. The what doesn’t matter to Brenda remotely. It’s just the who and the where now. 

“And anyway,” Brenda says, trying to bring a little levity back into her voice. “Chief should probably have term limits, like a president. We don’t want the Popes and the Trumps of the world, squatting in an office forever.”

“You’re overhauling your policies and procedures right now,” Sharon says. “Write it in. It only has value if it applies to you.” 

“Okay,” Brenda says. 

“Now stop calling me,” Sharon says with a chuckle. “I’ll see you in, oh let’s see… nine weeks?”

“Ooof,” Brenda says. It feels like a punch in the chest. 

“Worth the wait?” Sharon asks lightly. 

“A hundred percent,” Brenda says.


End file.
